Race, Family and the Trump Era

Never Miss A Story.

Daily Edition

Less-sour note for album sales

Empty

Nashville — U.S. album sales were down 9.2% in April compared with the same month last year. But the deficit is a big improvement on the 17.9% deficit in March and the 11.5% deficit in February.

Nielsen SoundScan said 33.7 million units were sold during the five weeks from March 30-May 3. The relatively strong performance can be attributed to more popular titles: The top 40 titles on the Billboard 200 accounted for 20.6% of sales in April, compared with 17.4% in the year-ago period.

Still, year-to-date album sales are down 12.5% from 2008, with CD sales off about 20%.